


An Auspicious Beginning

by Ally



Category: 30 Rock
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-19
Updated: 2009-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-04 16:24:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ally/pseuds/Ally
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before TGS, Liz and Jenna move to New York City to get The Girlie Show started, and Liz runs into an unexpected friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Auspicious Beginning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [trustingno1](https://archiveofourown.org/users/trustingno1/gifts).



The 55 bus went from Liz Lemon's third floor walk-up apartment in Hyde Park to Midway Airport, winding its way over the freeway, past the block of MLK drive with the best pizza place, and through street after street of small, rundown houses that nevertheless displayed every possible variety of Christmas decoration on their tar-patched roofs and chain-link fences. There were the classics, the icicle lights and plastic lawn reindeer, and there were some newer options, like the blow-up snowglobe that slumped precariously on a roof that didn't even have a chimney.

Liz liked Christmas, but she was looking forward to leaving behind the Christmases she had spent with Jenna, huddled around the stove in their kitchen for heat, hearing arguments between rival bands of teenage carolers beneath their windows. The apartment faced directly into the wall of the apartment building next door, and it was always a struggle to get any kind of light that didn't come from the sodium lamps by the sidewalk. Christmas lights on an already overloaded circuit breaker didn't help.

Of course, the best part was the cookies. The cookies and the eggnog. At Smith, she had been the only one on her hall to not only finish the half-gallon eggnog challenge, but to keep drinking it, just because it tasted so good.

They were at the airport sooner than she had anticipated, which was good, because Jenna was usually late. Liz bumped her suitcases down the bus aisle, trying to avoid the sleeping woman who had thrown her legs out into the aisle, and made it to the curb just as Jenna stepped out of a towncar. Hobbled by her suitcases, Liz limped over to the spot where Jenna's driver was depositing her matching Louis Vuitton bags, and giving her a short salute goodbye, without any money appearing to change hands.   
"I thought Jeff was going to drive you." Jenna had told Liz that she had to say goodbye to their director at Second City.  
"Jeff? No, that was Michael. He hired the car for me," Jenna explained breezily, waving over a porter and gesturing to their bags. "You didn't take the bus, did you? Honestly, Liz. You have got to find an older man!"

The entire plane ride to New York, buoyed by three tiny bottles of in-flight Merlot, Liz daydreamed about her new East Coast life. Her parents had questioned the move to Chicago from the beginning, but after seeing improv comedy during her year abroad in Germany, she had known it was something, one of the few things, that she could be good at. She had met Jenna at Second City, where they spun off a one-woman show that had exhausted Chicago's possibilities pretty quickly. She was sick of doing improv at the senior center. There was only one real town for theatre and comedy, and they were heading to it.

Beside her, Jenna was starting an argument with a man across the aisle, who had complained "God, I hate JFK."  
"He was our best President! And hot!" Jenna objected shrilly.  
"Jenna…honey…he means the airport," Liz slurred, and dropped her head to her shoulder for a quick nap.

Waiting at baggage claim for Jenna's luggage, Liz kept thinking she saw famous people. Wasn't that Katie Couric, by the bagel stand? And Jim Walbert, the managing director of CNBC, talking on his cell phone next to the help desk? Liz patted down the left side of her hair reflexively. It had a tendency to stick out. She felt a tap on her shoulder.   
"Jenna, do you have a brush?" She asked, turning around. Except, it wasn't Jenna.  
"Liz? Elizabeth Lemon?" He was wearing a golfing cap and a brown-and-green plaid pullover, with glasses hanging on a chain down the front of his chest. Liz pretended that it took her a minute to place him, but the instant flush of embarrassment in her cheeks and neck gave her away.  
"Mister Hornberger! Hi! How is Nana Hornberger?" Nana Hornberger had been, well, one of the regulars at Westlawn Senior Center improv nights, and her son Peter's visits had coincided with the shows a few times. All Liz remembered of the one guest around her own age was that Peter's suggestions were often the only ones that made sense as "non-geographical location" or "noun."   
"Nana passed away last month, actually." Peter made a slight grimace. "And please, call me Pete."   
"I'm so sorry to hear that. She laughed a lot. Pete." Liz made her own small grimace. "But what are you doing here? Nana said you teach high school math."  
"I do. Well, I did. It got…hectic, and…you know, I've always wanted to be in television," Pete said, looking away.   
"You mean on television?"  
"No, well, not really…I mean…in charge of programming, or something like that. And I thought, well, I'm not even thirty yet--" Liz was not quite thirty, but very close "--and high school is always going to be there. Waiting for me. Trigonometry and Pre-Calculus and little hooligans who don't even know how to factor a polynomial, and…" Pete trailed off. "Can I get your phone number? I really don't know anyone in New York yet, and it would be great if we could get coffee sometime."   
"Sure, I…" Liz looked around, as though someone might have anticipated her need of a pen, but Pete was already pulling out his phone, and she recited the number for him.   
"Thanks! Well, I'll…I'll see you around! Happy holidays!" He waved his phone in a little salute, and left, almost at a trot.   
"Blerg," Liz said to herself, as Jenna finally appeared, followed by a thin African man pulling a trolley loaded with her bags.   
"Liz! I found us a taxi, come on!"

Although Jenna had agreed to support them at first, as they tried to get bookings for their two-woman "Girlie Show" and day jobs for themselves, living in a hotel in Chinatown was not what Liz had expected. It was far from all the studios on Avenue of the Americas, and it was a bridge away from Brooklyn and all the hole-in-the-wall theaters she had thought they might start out in. Christmas was two days away, the streets outside the hotel smelled of crushed oranges, and the only place with free wi-fi and no Christmas music was the reading room of the public library. Bryant Park, directly behind it, was too cold and snow-bound for sitting, so every morning Liz snuck a thermos of coffee into the reading room, plugged her laptop into an outlet at the back table, and trawled newsgroups for any job openings and audition listings.

Then, after an hour of furtive sips of coffee (food and drinks weren't allowed in the library) and eavesdropping on old men discussing Philip Roth and their colonoscopies, Liz's phone rang.

Of course, this drew the immediate ire of the desk librarian even more urgently than the possibility of coffee spills, and Liz hurriedly yanked out her power cord, gathered her bag, computer, and thermos into her arms, and ran out of the reading room. In the lobby, she transferred the thermos handle to her teeth, and opened her phone, before realizing that she couldn't talk with a thermos in her mouth.   
"Heraow?"  
"Hello...um, Liz?"   
She dropped everything on a bench, and removed the thermos. "Pete! Hi! Sorry, I was just, uh, busy--but I'm not busy! Not now! How are you?"   
"I'm great! I just had a job interview at NBC, and I think it went well! Are you in Manhattan? Are you free for lunch? I really want to talk about this with someone."  
"Lunch? Yes! I mean, that sounds great, Pete, I'd like to hear about it." Liz's mouth had already started to water at the idea of food that wasn't szechuan noodles from the cart outside the hotel. They agreed to meet at an Italian place near NBC headquarters in Rockefeller Center. In an effort at makeup, Liz applied extra chapstick.

"Pete!" Impulsively, she gave him a kiss on the cheek, then saw that it had left a clear chapstick residue on his cheek.   
"Hey! Nice hat!" Pete tousled her green chenille cap. "Kind of makes you look like a turtle."   
"Oh...um, thanks."   
They were seated inside immediately, as the usual crowd of businessmen had mostly left town in anticipation of the holidays. While Liz debated with herself over whether it would look crass to order two appetizers, Pete started to talk about his interview.   
"So, it turns out the position I had applied for was already taken, but that was actually lucky, because the guy they used to have in charge of Thursday night comedy recently died, so they've been looking for someone to fill that position, and when I told them I'd recently been in charge of corralling one hundred and fifty high-schoolers, they said I'd be perfect!"  
There was an important word in there that attracted Liz's attention.  
"Wait...comedy? You're going to be in charge of comedy for NBC?"  
"Thursday night comedy, yeah, I interviewed to be assistant producer. I'm not sure what the show is, but they said there's an hour slot set up for it. If I get the job, that is. There's one other candidate interviewing this afternoon."  
"Oh, I'm thinking bad thoughts about that candidate already."   
"Me too! Oh, Liz, this would be so nice--it's twice what I made as a teacher, everyone there is over eighteen, I wouldn't have to explain the secant and the cotangent to anyone..." He trailed off, as their meals arrived, Liz pushing her water glass next to his to make room for her three plates.   
"But, I'm sorry, I haven't even asked how you're doing. Are you auditioning out here?"  
Through mouthfuls of carbonara sauce, Liz explained what she and Jenna were doing, and what their show was about. It felt like a pitch, the way that talking about the Girlie Show always felt like a pitch, as though she had to sell her imagination to a skeptical crowd. Pete really seemed to be listening, though, and maybe it was just the instincts of a teacher, but she got the sense that he believed in the project, and that he thought she could do it. He laughed when she did her imitation of Jenna's characters--mostly based on the real Jenna, although Pete wouldn't know--and he was smiling broadly as she trailed off, explaining that so few shows got picked up by big-name theaters each year, that they couldn't possibly hope to be part of something like Saturday Night Live, but maybe a weekly engagement at a little venue in Brooklyn, something to get their name out...  
"Or Thursday nights!" Pete finished. "If I get the job, and they let me pick a show, there's no way I'm not giving you a shot!" Liz mentally diagrammed the double negative, then smiled widely.   
"Really? You'd use your very first programming slot on the Girlie Show?"  
"Yeah, absolutely. We might have to change the name, maybe hire someone else to round out your ensemble, but absolutely, it sounds really funny, Liz." Pete's eyes drifted as he imagined his rising viewer numbers.

After tiramisu, because it was still early and they were right there, Pete and Liz walked over to the skating rink behind Rockefeller Center. Liz had stuffed her green hat in her purse, and her curls were, as usual, sticking up on the left side. She tried to keep Pete to her right as they walked around the upper level, looking down at the skaters. At this hour it was mostly city mothers--or babysitters, she supposed--and little children, bundled up until they looked like cream puffs, taking tottering steps around the rink. Liz would've gone for a spin, but Pete seemed content with watching, moving his gaze from the skating rink to the enormous tree at the other end of the plaza, and back.   
"Was it hard for you to move out here?" He wasn't looking at her, but she felt his hand scoot closer to hers on the railing.  
"Well, the plane ticket was kind of expensive, and we don't have anywhere permanent to stay, but..."  
"No, I mean, leaving Chicago...I don't know, my parents keep asking when I'm going to settle down, and I really want to. But I want to really see what I'm capable of beforehand, too."  
Liz considered making a Star Wars reference and thought better of it. "Well, my parents are in Connecticut, so they were happy I was moving closer to them. They've always wanted me to get a real job, though, so...I guess it's a draw."  
Pete smiled, and took her hand. "You'll have a real job if I have any say in it." He turned to face her, and she stepped away from the railing. "Thanks for having lunch with me, Liz. I'm really glad you're here."   
"You too, Pete." She tried her best to smile normally, like a person someone could settle down with.

The next morning, Liz woke up to the sound of Jenna flinging hangers in their shared closet, and bumping dresser drawers into each other. Their hotel room had two beds, and so about one-quarter of the space they needed.   
"Jenna? It's ass early a'clock, what's the deal?" She grabbed her pillow and tried to stuff her head under it.   
"Oh, nothing, sorry Liz!" Jenna sang out, in a voice so obviously full of false calm that Liz sat up and reached for her glasses.   
"Why are you packing? Are you trying to run out on me?"  
"Oh, Liz. Of course not." Pointedly not answering, Jenna went back to stuffing lingerie in her handbag. Jenna's job-hunting luck had left her in New York, and Liz was relatively sure she hadn't even found a job to match the phone-sex ad they had done in Chicago when they had run out of money.   
"Did you find a boyfriend to move in with already?"  
"No, Liz--look, I didn't want to tell you because I didn't want you to be upset that I hadn't invited you. My cousin Cherianne invited me to spend the holidays with her and her husband in Aspen. And I can't possibly just bring you along, they're overextending themselves as it is." Jenna paused, pursing her lips in annoyance. "You don't even ski."  
"No, not anymore, I like my legs unbroken. Jenna, that's fine, you just have to tell me these things. When will you be back?"  
"After New Year's, probably. I'm sure they'll want me to sing on New Year's Eve." Word of Jenna's imagined singing abilities hadn't penetrated Lower Manhattan, much less Aspen, but she seemed convinced. "I have to go, the taxi's coming in five minutes! Kisses!"  
"Bye...Jenna..." the door clicked shut, and Liz fell back against her pillow. Outside the window, she could see that it was snowing again. "Blerg!"

The morning of December 24th, Liz woke up with the left side of her hair sticking straight out from her head, and a cold that had come out of nowhere to wreak havoc on her sinuses. She groped on the nightstand for a tissue, opened her eyes to neon lights coming from the bus station across the street, and felt like crying. It was eleven a.m., she didn't have a job or anywhere to go for Christmas, with her family having bought tickets to Germany that summer, when making plans for the holidays seemed hopelessly far away.

After her shower, shivering under the heat lamp, she looked in the mirror and decided to give up on good impressions. Her cell phone was buried under a dirty shirt and a grey sports bra. It rang three times, and then he picked up.   
"Pete? It's Liz. Look, I was hoping maybe you don't have plans for today, because I don't, and I was wondering if, I guess, you'd like to come over to a hotel room, and eat Chinese food and maybe watch a movie. It's not much of a Christmas eve, but that's what I've got."   
He laughed. Mercifully, he laughed. "Liz, I'm Jewish; that's what I'd be doing anyway. Be sure to order some cashew chicken, can I meet you at Grand Street station?"  
He said he'd be there in half an hour; Liz was there in fifteen minutes.

It's A Wonderful Life (with Mandarin subtitles) almost over, and the mu shu pork entirely demolished, Liz leaned against Pete and wiggled her toes under the covers, where he couldn't see them.  "Are you going to eat that egg roll?"  
"Are you going to fight me for it?"  
She cocked one chopstick like a sword. "You better believe it."   
"Okay, okay, I surrender!" He passed her his plate. "Go to town."  
"Were you really free today, or did you take pity on me?" She asked him between bites.  
"I was free, honest. I don't know anyone else here, Liz! It was you or staring down the manta ray at the aquarium."  
"Oh, take that, manta ray."   
He smiled. "You're much nicer to look at."   
Liz leaned over to kiss him on the cheek, and was surprised when he turned, catching her lips. _I taste like egg roll!_ She thought. _I haven't washed my hair!_ When he pulled back, she actually giggled.  
"Okay, that's enough of that," he said.   
"What do you mean? I think that's not quite enough of...of that..." she reached behind her blindly for a place to put their plates away.   
"Well, I can't very well be kissing my coworker, can I?" He smiled guiltily. "It's a little early, but...Merry Christmas, Miss Lemon. You've got a show."   
She tried to look happy, and she was happy, and astonished, and utterly disappointed that things had started and ended with a single kiss. "You got the job? You got the job! Pete!" She started to hug him, then stopped, with her arms half up. "Congratulations."   
"You too," he grinned, and rubbed her shoulder. "You're my new star director."   
_And you're practically my new boss_, she thought, pressing her lips together. _Crap_.  
"I owe you one, Pete." She lowered her eyes, trying to look seductive. "Definitely owe you one."  
"Well..." he leaned over her, took the remote, and turned off the movie. His face was very close to hers. "I guess I'm not your coworker _quite_ yet..."


End file.
